


Indelible

by by_no_one_more_than_me (Lady_Cleo)



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Literary References & Allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 13:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14450259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Cleo/pseuds/by_no_one_more_than_me
Summary: Indelible (adj) - making marks that cannot be erased; not able to be forgotten or removed.Rio and Beth have left their mark on each other, or the one where Beth lives up to her literary namesake and figures out something important.





	Indelible

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick fic to burn off some tension of the un-fun variety. Brio is very good for that.
> 
> also some of the dialogue is probably not gonna be spot on. this is being knocked out on very little sleep with a few days between me and the scene in question. sorry.

They're fighting again. For once, she doesn't have a gun to her head. It almost doesn't feel right.

"That family you're always talking about? Go home to 'em."

"We both know you won't let me do that."

Her mind is otherwise engaged arguing with itself, so the words just slip out of her mouth like a kid sneaking out the back door to play.

"Is it gonna be you, or am I gonna come home and find your boys in my kitchen?"

She doesn't know what's worse: the possibility he might actually kill her or the possibility she'll never see him again. Both options suck.

In the middle of pondering exact percentages of suck and which one is higher, it hits Beth like truck keys to the jaw that she's not just sad about the loss of a payday or hurt about Rio's sudden relapse to disrespect or even scared about the potential loss of their lives. She's... _angry_.

She hasn't felt like this since the year after Kenny was born, when she and Dean had had their one and only knockdown-dragout. Fatherhood was freaking him out  _hard  _and she'd woken up to find him trying to sneak out with a garment bag and her poppy print suitcase. He'd made BS excuses about just going to stay at his parents' for a few days and he'd be back. She'd hauled him downstairs by his ear and bitten his head off like an unsexy praying mantis.

It had been this weird culmination of everything: several virulent strains of frustration, the lack of sleep, the postpartum hormonal imbalance, the creeping insecurity over her new "mom bod" and a million other things, but the final straw was that she loved him and he was trying to walk.

It's close to how she feels now. Of all the reactions she could and should be having, she is angry at him the way you only get when someone you care about, someone you have feelings for, someone you love is trying to push you away.

This thing has been growing between her and Rio for so long, she can't clearly recall a time it wasn't there. Like that line from the novel her mother had read every day during pregnancy and whose heroine she was named for, she was in the middle before she knew she'd begun. It's written on her heart like a tattoo, indelible as the ink under his skin.

She think she's probably got a place under there too.

And then he's calling her by name, the shape of his lips around all those classic syllables making her heart squeeze. "Elizabeth... go home."

"I can't." He turns back for the second, third, fourth time tonight to look at her, and he's going to say something else when she breaks in quietly. "I need this." Silent steps bring him a little closer, back to the spot where he'd said her name. "I need... you."

Three little words. Simple, if not exactly easy. A calm proclamation of a fact, a permanent change of status.

She doesn't think she blinked (too nervous to close her eyes in case he disappears) but suddenly he's there. His eyes are burning into hers, his hands are pulling her into the unending circle of his arms... and then his lips are on hers. Soft, sweet, desperate, demanding, hot... _heavenly_.

Whatever the next hour, day, week, month, year, and so on bring, it will have to bring it to them together.

It isn't falling in love. It isn't even a step down. They just take each other by the hand and calmly walk into it, side by side.

**Author's Note:**

> so... what'd ya think? 
> 
> note: Beth is referencing one of my fave lines from Pride & Prejudice about how she fell for Rio.   
> "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew I had begun."
> 
> also, I'm sure no one is wondering, but Annie would be named after Anne Shirley of the Green Gables series.


End file.
